1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data encryption, and, more particularly, to generating a random number using a scattering waveguide.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern communication networks, including the Internet, the World Wide Web, and various intranets, including secure government and corporate intranets, may transmit large amounts of data to virtually any device capable of communicating with the network. Government agencies, industrial and commercial concerns, and private citizens have come to rely on these networks to transmit data in a secure and efficient fashion. For example, private citizens may order products and/or services from various commercial concerns by providing personal information and credit card information over the Internet. Both the private citizens and the commercial concerns rely upon the network to transmit this information in a secure manner so that the information cannot be stolen by a third party. For another example, government agencies may transmit confidential documents using an interagency intranet. The government agencies therefore rely upon these communication networks to preserve the confidentiality of the documents. Consequently, information transmitted over various communication networks is typically encrypted.
Data may be encrypted using encryption keys. For example, in public key encryption, a user has a private encryption key that should be known only to the user and a public key that is available to anyone. Data sent by the user may be encrypted using the public encryption key and a computational function, such as a hashing function. The encrypted data may only be decrypted by someone with access to the private key. As long as the user keeps the private key secret, data encrypted using the public key is prohibitively difficult for any other person or entity to decrypt. However, the value of a single private key may be determined comparatively easily. For example, the value of the private key may be determined by examining a post-it note including the private key, by directly or remotely accessing private keys stored on a computer from an unsecured location, and the like.
Users or organizations that transmit secure information on a regular basis, or that transmit highly sensitive information, may therefore employ a random encryption key generator to provide new encryption keys on a regular basis. The computational functions used to generate encryption keys are typically concise and are often well-known to persons of ordinary skill in the art. Thus, a sophisticated adversary may predict future encryption keys if a limited number of keys have been discovered through successful attacks on encrypted data or using inside information. These types of attacks are commonly referred to as known-key attacks. In some cases, a single compromised encryption key may be sufficient to undermine the security of an encryption key generator.
The present invention is directed to addressing the effects of one or more of the problems set forth above.